On January 23, 1968, North Korea attacked and seized an American Navy spy ship, the USS Pueblo. In the process, one American sailor was mortally wounded and another ten crew members were injured, including the ship\u27s commanding officer. The crew was held for eleven months in a North Korean prison. Today, the ship remains in North Korea as a gray, steel museum, glorifying the success of the Democratic People\u27s Republic of Korea\u27s Navy in its struggle against the imperialist American aggressors. This thesis examines two primary question: How could the capture and retention of a U.S. Navy warship by a minor military state occur? What was the motive of the North Koreans? My conclusion is that the Pueblo incident occurred because of inadequate American leadership at multiple levels within the U.S. Government and U.S. Navy and because of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung\u27s strict adherence to the Juche ideology. Congress and the U.S. Navy conducted exhaustive post-incident hearings and investigations, which became one of the issues that bedeviled and degraded Lyndon Johnson\u27s presidency. The Pueblo hearings and investigations, with their finger-pointing and attempts to deflect or attribute blame, became a sideshow that caught and held the interest of the media and the public. They distracted the president in the midst of the over-shadowing Vietnam War at the expense of Johnson\u27s greater interest and legacy, his social programs. This study links failures in American leadership to Cold War political and foreign policy practices to disregard for North Korean ideology. Its conclusions offer a broader understanding of the causal factors surrounding the Pueblo incident
